you looked at me like maybe i'm an angel
by irnan
Summary: SPOILERS FOR 4.19


_This is a disclaimer._

_**AN: **There are three things, and three things only, on the face of this earth that could get John Winchester to abandon a job and drive through the night like he's doing right now._

**you looked at me like maybe I'm an angel underneath**

There were several reasons Kate Milligan never told John Winchester about her pregnancy. Her mother, incidentally, was not impressed with that decision in the least, and Kate eventually ended up making a list: Reasons Not To Tell John About The Baby. She wrote it in her kitchen one night at three a.m., right hand pressed against her abdomen, left hand skittering across the paper, stopping and starting again in jumps, the pen in her hand wagging furiously from side to side, or tapping on the wood, when she wasn't writing.

Reason Number One: He's not a mechanic. Seriously. Mechanic?! Her ass. Just how stupid did the man think she was? Mechanics don't take road trips to towns in Minnesota where there's been a string of grave robberies. And mechanics on road trips don't come into the ER looking the way he had, either: ripped to shreds. Kate could think of no better way to describe his injuries. Something had _torn _at him, like a dog with a stuffed toy.

Reason Number Two: The man had never, in all of the five days they'd known each other and the twice they'd had sex, taken his wedding ring off. Kate had asked about his wife before she'd tried kissing him, and he'd replied with clenched jaw and face turned away.

Reason Number Three: The baby was hers. Not John's. Sperm donation did not, and never would, make a man a father. Kate would rather her child grew up without one than with one who couldn't be bothered with him or her.

Reason Number Four: Kate didn't love him. How the hell could she? It had taken her two days just to pry a civil word out of him in the ER. He was tall, dark and mysterious, and a very good lay, excuse her French, but Kate was old enough, at 34, to be able to differentiate perfectly between love and lust, thank you very much, and she was not in love with John Winchester. Why shackle herself to the man if she didn't love him? She wasn't even sure they could safely be described as 'friends', let alone anything else.

Reason Number Five: He drove a gas-guzzling American macho monstrosity of a car. Sure, it was a classic and blah blah blah, but Kate preferred her boyfriends a little more sensitive and a little less gun-toting redneck. She didn't know what he'd kept in that trunk, and she didn't damn well want to, thank you very much.

Reason Number Six: There was no way in hell Kate would ever believe John didn't have a criminal record the length of her mother's dining room table.

Reason Number Seven: ... oh, who was she kidding. She was alone and pregnant and while one half of her was terrified that he'd hang up on her and change his number if she called him with this news, the other half was terrified that he wouldn't, and that suddenly, this motherhood thing wouldn't be just this motherhood thing, it would be this relationship thing, and custody thing, and alimony and courts and the shadow of his dead wife and her mother's complete and utter disapproval of a man who kept a stack of AC/DC tapes in his car.

In short, it was all too complicated, and Kate nodded firmly at the list she'd made, and then tossed it away. She glared at the phone on her way past and up to bed as if this whole mess were the telephone's fault and not her own for forgetting to take the Pill that weekend, and even more her own fault for wanting to have sex with John Winchester in the first place. Nurses shouldn't go shacking up with their patients. No matter how gorgeous he was, or how safe he'd made her feel, or how gently his hands had touched her face.

*********

Adam wheedled his father's phone number out of her one Saturday evening. Kate had just got off her shift at the hospital, she was tired and fed up and probably stank of blood after that kid came in who'd sliced his leg open with his ice skates, and no, she had no idea how he'd done that, and there was Adam, biting down on his bottom lip and reiterating his request for his 'real Dad's phone number'. Kate had asked him once when she'd ever given him a fake Dad, but Adam, with all the pathos and melodrama of a ten year old, had run off to slam every door in the house and hadn't answered.

Now she sighed. Sometimes it felt like it was the only thing he ever talked to her about anymore.

"Adam. I. Look. I don't want you to be hurt if - if he - "

"You said he was a good man," Adam insisted stubbornly.

Kate felt like protesting _No I did not!_ in as childish a voice as she possibly could. She bit down on the impulse.

"You realise he might not want anything to do with you," she said harshly.

Adam nodded. Rather jerkily, true, but it was a nod all the same.

Kate gave him the phone number. He went up to his room to actually make the call, so she didn't hear a word, and he wouldn't let her come in afterwards, which probably meant that John had brushed him off.

The next morning, around five a.m., the doorbell rang.

"Why didn't you tell me?" John demanded. Kate gaped at him for a minute; he was standing on her doorstep at five in the morning, looking absolutely haggard, and sporting a beard, and she was so astonished her brain had shut down.

"I," she said, and gave herself a shake. "Well. It wasn't like - Adam's _my_ kid, you understand? Mine."

John was furious. "And mine," he said. "And mine. You had no right to keep him from me. _Anything _could've happened -"

He broke off then, turned away, took a moment to get himself under control. When he looked at her again, he was still pissed, that much was clear, but he was also quieter, and perhaps a little apologetic for making her have this discussion on her front fucking porch in full view of Mark Van Der Meer, rattling past on his bike and throwing newspapers all over the place, he was so busy staring at them.

"I want to see him," John said.

Kate sighed. "I should have known better than to give him your number," she said, stepping aside and gesturing him to come in.

Adam stumbled, bleary-eyed and yawning, down the stairs and into the kitchen about an hour later, rubbing a hand through his messy hair. Kate decided there and then he needed another haircut.

John looked up from the coffee cup he'd been staring into and pushed his chair back, half rising to his feet. Adam stopped short and stared at him.

"Dad?" he said uncertainly, and John, for what was quite possibly the first time that Kate could remember, smiled.

"Hey, kiddo."


End file.
